Janet A. Cook has exhibited widely at galleries and institutions though out the East coast of America, including the United Nations, NY. In May 2019, Dacia Gallery, NYC is hosting her forth solo show. Over the years she has received many awards for excellence, including being twice a finalist in the Arc Center Renewal in 2019 and 2017 and The Portrait Society of America in 2017; Two awards at the Portrait Society of America Annual Member Show, a Gold and Silver medal from the Allied Artists of America and The Salmagundi Club; a Master Circle Medal award from The International Association of Pastel Societies, Best in Show from the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club. Cook is an elected member of the Salmagundi Club, Pastel Society of America, The Allied Artists of America, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club and America Artists Professional League. Cook teaches workshops at the Art Students League, NYC, and holds a weekly class at the Pastel Society of America, NYC. She has taught workshops in France and has been a guest lecturer at Southern University of Utah. Over the past few years she has been invited to judge and jury shows at a number of arts organizations and currently serves as a member of the Arts Committee at the Salmagundi Club. Cook's work has been featured in the New York Times weekend section and reviewed and in the Times of Trenton, NJ, Fine Art Connoisseur, The Brooklyn Rail, NYArtbeat.com events section, Artdaily.org, The Epoch Times, The American Art Collector, American Artist Magazine, the Gallery and Studio Magazine, The Times Square Chronicle, TheGreatNude.tv, which also made a Youtube video of her last solo show at Dacia, NBC's 'Dateline' program, the 'Da Vinci Code', The Pastel Journal, The New York Optimist, and Drawing Magazine. Cook has had several articles published in the International Artist Magazine and her portraits have appeared on the front cover of Alzheimer's Foundation of America, the Art Students League Lines Magazine and in Poets and Artists Magazine. Cook studied at the National Academy of Art and Design and Art Students League, NYC, and has a degree in the History of Art from de Montford University, UK. Her work is in many private collections in the US, UK, Panama, Israel and the permanent collection of the Trenton City Museum, NY. Janet Cook is represented by Dacia Gallery in New York City.

Throughout our lives many things push and pull us in different directions resulting in complex internal struggles. This show examines these struggles through metaphor and humor, running the gamut from imaginative combinations to straightforward realism. Over the past couple of years I have experienced losses, including the death of my mother, which has led me to create more personal work.  As a Brit we tend to bottle up our emotions and then one day, we die. So, before that happened I decided to reexamine my own experiences and my relationship to art: my subjects and my media. I consider myself a contemporary representational artist. A common thread running throughout my work is my fascination with the figure: timeless, beautiful and powerful. Additional inspiration comes from a variety of sources ranging from the Old Masters to modern day advertising, graffiti and body art. My goal is to combine these elements, along with my own imagination into a cohesive whole that intrigues and engages the viewer. Drawing has been my main focus for the last two years. I used to see it as a tool for planning paintings, embracing pen and ink has opened up a whole new approach, and I now look for ways to combine it with other media such as watercolor and more recently, oil.